


A cause not worth pursuing

by Clovercove



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I wrote this in an hour, This is just Edward loosing his mind after Alphonse dies, anyways here's wonderwall, let the madness consume me, not beta read i'm posting this five minutes after completing it, proceeds to play Bring Me to Life on the recorder, rip our sweet sunshine boy, whoops :), whoopsy I killed Alphonse haha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clovercove/pseuds/Clovercove
Summary: Colonel Roy Mustang leaves Resembool and two boys in his wake, ready to see them waltzing into Central only a few years later. What greets him is a boy more damaged than when he left and a distinct lack of a hulking armored form next to him.The military had certainly enlisted more deranged minds than his.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Edward Elric & a distinct lack of therapy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	A cause not worth pursuing

Edward Elric was a boy whose life was shadowed by tragedies. Dig deeper into his psyche than just his outer shell of a discontent husk and you’ve got a child buried under the weight of death and sorrow and anger and grief. No one bothered to dig that deep. 

He could be seen now, on an off day where he had no missions and no leads to get his or his brothers bodies back. If he was back home in resembool he would have been lounging by the river and chatting with Alphonse. Here he could only sit atop the roof of a house and chat with Alphonse. They talked with no words more often than they saw each other. Whenever Ed could catch a glimpse of his brother his eyes burned for the rest of the day and he screamed into hands the following night. Ed loved his younger brother. 

Most day’s Alphonse stood behind him, out of view. Edward knew he was there because he knew someone was behind him, watching him and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He felt like he couldn’t breathe with that oppressing gaze set on him everywhere he went and felt comforted by it. His lungs burned and smiled and chatted with thin air that he knew held his brother. 

The people around him gave Alphonse odd looks. They looked annoyed, apprehensive, disgusted. 

Scared, most of all. 

Edward would laugh at the looks. They would surely judge Alphonse on his disorienting appearance, silver and blue and gold with non-linear shapes making up his armor. But he knew the truth. His brother was sweet and kind and just, a boy no one should be scared of let alone disgusted at. So Ed would laugh and push past them and tell Al to hurry up. Al would comply and scurry after his older brother like he always did and bear into his neck like a feral dog looking to kill its prey. Alphonse wasn’t scary. 

Edward was terrified of Alphonse. 

...

Edward hated the bastard colonel and his stupid subordinates and their stupid looks they sent him whenever he walked into the office. It was obvious that they disliked Edward. They were uncomfortable around the boy and his seemingly permanent glazed over eyes. He never seemed to latch his gaze onto anything. Whenever he did it was in open air and only for a split second before he stumbled back and let out a horrified scream. 

They were glad he didn’t focus on anything after that. 

Riza Hawkeye had obvious concerns when he was stationed to work under Colonel Mustang. 

“He’s unstable. Not safe to work with,” She would say. Mustang would nod his head in agreeance and fill out a formal order to get him kicked out of the military. He would sign his official signature and it would fall into the drawer holding the many other files of his termination and they would continue to stack up. Hawkeye stopped after the first few months. 

Havoc was the only one who seemed to try and pull the kid into conversation, at first. He would jokingly call him chief and ruffle his hair. He would try to include him in jokes and gossip. Edward would turn his broken, unfocused gaze onto the man and he would quickly excuse himself. He could often be found in the mens restroom, vomiting into the toilets afterwards. No one else tried to interact with him.

He talked to air most of the time. It was off putting at first because the other occupants would think he was talking to them, but he would just be smiling up at the air with a distant look and then pin them with a glare when they stared. They learned to block out whenever he mumbled a few words or had a full on conversation with himself. It had become a disturbing second nature for them. Feury would grow extra twitchy when the conversations filled the room. 

Sometimes they were nonsense. 

“Remember when that little blue dog walked up to you? You were always one for cats so you didn’t care much for it. It got angry and bit your arm clean off. That was funny.”

Most times they were disturbing. 

“Mom became a monster. Alchemy is a means to an end and instead of an end we prolonged the life of a tormented form. Alphonse, do you hate me? I wanted to kill her. I wanted to strangle that thing to death because it wasn’t mom and you weren’t there. I was alone. It didn’t have blood. It had too many eyes. All of them looked at me and I wanted to stab them all”

Those were the main reasons they learned to tune them out. The rest of the military avoided the wing they resided in when they could. The occupants didn’t blame them. They felt like they were growing a little more insane every time Edward walked in with his broken smile and dead fish eyes. 

…

Hughes vowed to never let his daughter suffer the fate he saw in Edward. No child should go through that and he’d be damned if anyone even tried to inflict a quarter of what Edward had gone through onto his daughter. 

He had wanted to comfort the lost child at first. He saw the despondent air shroud the kid and he wanted to help. Possibly sway the kid into realizing his current mental state and get him to seek professional help. Hell, he’d pay for it if the kid needed. But whenever he tried to broach the subject Edward would stare at him as if he was the one who killed his mom. 

“Shut up, I’m not crazy. Alphonse is right there and I hate you and he hates you so go away,” He would growl out before excusing himself from any building the two were in. 

Hughes was a dreamer but he knew the difference between a dream and reality. 

No one was beyond saving, Hughes would say. Mustang would laugh and use himself and an example of an irredeemable bastard then turn to Ed. He was too far gone, Mustang would say in his drunken state. He was lost so deeply in his own mind Mustang wasn’t sure anything he saw in the real world was actually real. He spouted nonsense and laughed and talked to himself. To his dead brother, he said quietly one night when he drank one too many bottles. 

Hughes learned, eventually, that he was right. Edward was too far gone to be salvaged from his own mind. But looking at the child laughing at thin air, Hughes wondered if it really was so bad to let a child escape to a better world. 

A year later Hughes was shot in a telephone booth. His daughter Elicia developed a new imaginary friend once the news was broken to the family and Edward encouraged her as Garcia Hughes cried in the background. She saw her daughter slip farther away than her own husband. 

…

Alphonse Elric was dead. He had died once, when trying to revive his mother, and died a second time when his brother kicked him into the river during one of their sparring matches. He now existed as memories and the broken delusions of a kid who lost too much too quickly. His armored body, fractals of memories and papercut childish ideals, was a horror for its creator to look at and made Edward want to vomit. 

Alphonse Elric was dead and Edward Elric refused to believe his one reason to continue existing was gone. A pasted together soul followed him around now, not even his own brothers soul. An echo of a shattered family and the unfairness of reality and Truth. 

Alphonse Elric died and just like Trisha Elric he was forced to exist by a boy who only had good intentions. 

…

Truth is laughing in front of the Gate as he watches his favorite toy break faster than glass on concrete. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh whoops my hand slipped and now Alphonse is dead and Edward is a little bit crazy. My bad guys. Oh whoops it's set in the equally as upsetting 03'verse aw dang many my hand just keeps slipping. Aw shoot the Alfons in the other world is also dead so he can't find solace in the other world either ah dang sucks for Ed. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! :)


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